James Gurney

This daily weblog by Dinotopia creator James Gurney is for illustrators, plein-air painters, sketchers, comic artists, animators, art students, and writers. You'll find practical studio tips, insights into the making of the Dinotopia books, and first-hand reports from art schools and museums.

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All images and text are copyright 2015 James Gurney and/or their respective owners. Dinotopia is a registered trademark of James Gurney. For use of text or images in traditional print media or for any commercial licensing rights, please email me for permission.

However, you can quote images or text without asking permission on your educational or non-commercial blog, website, or Facebook page as long as you give me credit and provide a link back. Students and teachers can also quote images or text for their non-commercial school activity. It's also OK to do an artistic copy of my paintings as a study exercise without asking permission.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Here’s a painting of the largest rodent known to science. It’s something like a cross between a guinea pig and a rhinoceros. It would have stood about four feet high at the shoulder, weighing about 2,000 pounds.

Known as Josephoartigasia, the fossil skull was discovered in Uruguay and scientifically described in 2008. Tomorrow I’ll show you the steps that led from the skull to the final painting.

10 comments:

It's great to find out about it through your work, there was never much news about it over here in Uruguay. It's very close to its descendant, the 'carpincho', and the guys who discovered it must have thought it was an important find to name it after José Artigas, the national hero...

Wonderful painting. I'll be curious to see if sketching a donkey was part of your process -- that's what the exposed teeth and pulled back lips look like to me.

Jim, yesterday I had the opportunity to take a "behind closed doors" tour of the University of Michigan's Natural History Museum. Tables and drawers overflowing with skulls, ribs, and mastadon tusks. We were shown castings of the teeth from Lyuba, the frozen baby mammoth who "modeled" for you in one of the earlier Ranger Rick paintings. We also got to examine the skull and vertebrae of the earliest known species of whales. You would have enjoyed it.

This actually reminded me of a book that published a long time ago called "Life after Man." A lot of great speculative evolutionary theory in it, with some splendid naturalistic drawings.

Anyway, what happened on that alternate Earth after man went extinct, is that rodents rose up and filled all the niches in various ways...some rabbits evolved into deer-like beings, rats became large herbivores and carnivores...fascinating stuff. Have you ever seen that book?